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I began with five-gallon containers, and the potato plants quickly grew out of them, so I popped those containers in some 20-gallon trash cans. The plants still look good - I guess I just need to wait for flowers.

So explain this to me please: the potato plant just grows up without little potatoes until it flowers. Then when it flowers it starts growing potatoes? Where along the stem do the potatoes grow if this is the case? Or wait, they're tubers, so they grow from roots, right? So, the plant produces more roots along the stem as you cover it with soil, all the way to the top of the soil?

LlamaMomma here - I'll repeat what I've heard on the forum, it's accuracy hopefully is sound, and Surely someone else will come along if I'm wrong.

@moswell wrote:I began with five-gallon containers, and the potato plants quickly grew out of them, so I popped those containers in some 20-gallon trash cans. The plants still look good - I guess I just need to wait for flowers.

So explain this to me please: the potato plant just grows up without little potatoes until it flowers. LM - Yes and no, not all varieties will flower in order to form potatoes. Then when it flowers it starts growing potatoes? Where along the stem do the potatoes grow if this is the case? Or wait, they're tubers, so they grow from roots, right? So, the plant produces more roots along the stem as you cover it with soil, all the way to the top of the soil?

LM - Early potatoes form along the root, from the bottom and upto about 6 inches. Middle and late variety potatoes form all the way up. Someone please confirm or correct me please.

While seed potatoes are stored in a cool dry dark place they produce main shoots. When the seed potatoes are planted the main roots (shoots) grow vertically towards the soil surface. As they grow, stolons, secondary roots, sprout from the main shoots and grow outwards and sometimes outwards and upwards, and potatoes form at the end of these stolons. Smaller hair-like roots also grow from the stolons and from the growing tubers.

When the main roots each the soil surface they undergo a change and convert into a shaws. The shaws produce leaves instead of stolons. From our experiments we conclude that once this conversion from main root to shaw has occurred, it is irreversible. Once it has occurred, even if the shaw is earthed up, it will produce no further stolons and so no further potatoes. So the best results are achieved by earthing up as soon as possible. The problem with this, in normal circumstances, is that the plant is then unable to get energy and so is unable to grow strongly – it remains dependent on the energy stored within the seed potato and this is limited.

Thank you, kbb, you've taught me something valuable. And, I'm here to tell y'all, them stolons can travel a surprisingly long way before forming a potato. This afternoon, and I was patrolling the perimeter of the garden, a clump of unwanted grasses caught my eye. I grabbed it, pulled, got the whole root ball...and a baby potato in the middle of it! Had to be 2 feet from the nearest potato plant. It had grown through the remains of the hay bale surrounding the potato patch, under the fence and into the middle of the grass.

Competition potato growers use well manured straw beds fed by all sorts of secret recipes and kept warm & watered at ideal conditions . These beds are usually many feet across and around four feet deep .

From only one tuber they aim to hit half a ton of potatoes to be anywhere near being champion growers in their comps .

OMG, plantoid, now I can't wait to harvest from the old bale bed. It gave us some wonderful squashes last year, then I planted it with two kinds of potatoes this year: Rose Finn and Chieftan. It's the Rose Finn that began flowering early, and is obviously making potatoes, inside and outside the garden!

The potatoes in the glass house have finally produced flowers this afternoon .. the plants are over seven feet tall and are grown in almost a yard depth of MM .

When is the comp closing and judging begins ?

7 feet tall?! Ok, I won't worry about having plants 2 feet tall. I'm just hoping there is a lot of potatoes growing underneath my plants! I have 16" raised beds. My potatoes are in a 4'x4'. 8 squares of Norland reds and 4 of Yukon golds. I planted them early April. I haven't seen any flowers or potato fruits yet. Hoping soon!

The potatoes in the glass house have finally produced flowers this afternoon .. the plants are over seven feet tall and are grown in almost a yard depth of MM .

When is the comp closing and judging begins ?

7 feet tall?! Ok, I won't worry about having plants 2 feet tall. I'm just hoping there is a lot of potatoes growing underneath my plants! I have 16" raised beds. My potatoes are in a 4'x4'. 8 squares of Norland reds and 4 of Yukon golds. I planted them early April. I haven't seen any flowers or potato fruits yet. Hoping soon!

Evelyn in zone 4 Wyoming

Evelyn - I am in zone 4 in SD, planted my Norlands and Yukon Golds in mid April and have no blossoms yet either. But they should be appearing any day! We are currently in a hot spell, going to be 90's and humid for a few days. Should give them a growth spurt if they don't wilt away!

The potatoes in the glass house have finally produced flowers this afternoon .. the plants are over seven feet tall and are grown in almost a yard depth of MM .

When is the comp closing and judging begins ?

7 feet tall?! Ok, I won't worry about having plants 2 feet tall. I'm just hoping there is a lot of potatoes growing underneath my plants! I have 16" raised beds. My potatoes are in a 4'x4'. 8 squares of Norland reds and 4 of Yukon golds. I planted them early April. I haven't seen any flowers or potato fruits yet. Hoping soon!

Evelyn in zone 4 Wyoming

Evelyn - I am in zone 4 in SD, planted my Norlands and Yukon Golds in mid April and have no blossoms yet either. But they should be appearing any day! We are currently in a hot spell, going to be 90's and humid for a few days. Should give them a growth spurt if they don't wilt away!

Partial potato production of Yukon Golds planted on 4-19 in Mel's Mix in a sf box, 9 inches deep. (settled from 12 inches)Today on 7-13 I pulled two of the four plants in one square. Total weight exactly 3 pounds (twice added up on a weight watcher scale). If the other 2 plants in the the square do just as well, then Yukon Gold can produce 6 pounds per square foot. The largest was 9 oz. and the average was 5-6 oz. taters. Here is a pic of the first 2 plants results:

@llama momma wrote:Partial potato production of Yukon Golds planted on 4-19 in Mel's Mix in a sf box, 9 inches deep. (settled from 12 inches)Today on 7-13 I pulled two of the four plants in one square. Total weight exactly 3 pounds (twice added up on a weight watcher scale). If the other 2 plants in the the square do just as well, then Yukon Gold can produce 6 pounds per square foot. The largest was 9 oz. and the average was 5-6 oz. taters. Here is a pic of the first 2 plants results:

Yummy! Digging for potatoes is like digging for gold!

My potato plants still have no flowers! What is going on? I just hope I get something from all those squares of potatoes!

I hope you do too!Y'know I kept waiting for flowers that didn't really happen. Last year when I grew red taters there were all kinds of flowers but it was loaded with potato beetles too, were the beetles drawn to the flowers? I wonder because this year in contrast with no flowers, there were no potato beetles. Hmm, inspected the plants every single day too. Though I did find a huge hornworm, a greenish mexican bean beetle I think, and a japanese beetle.

@llama momma wrote:I hope you do too!Y'know I kept waiting for flowers that didn't really happen. Last year when I grew red taters there were all kinds of flowers but it was loaded with potato beetles too, were the beetles drawn to the flowers? I wonder because this year in contrast with no flowers, there were no potato beetles. Hmm, inspected the plants every single day too. Though I did find a huge hornworm, a greenish mexican bean beetle I think, and a japanese beetle.

Yuck! Worms gross me out! So you are getting potatoes without having had any flowers on them? Hope thats happening for me too! I was thinking of just leaving the potato squares alone until the plants started to die off in hopes there would be something to harvest. You give me hope!! Evelyn from zone 4 Wyoming

I just harvested my Yukon Golds this morning. From the pitiful handful of marbles left over from last year's crop that sprouted in the dark of the forgotten veggie drawer I harvested approx. 5 lbs of Goldies! Not bad for $0 output!

@llama momma wrote:I hope you do too!Y'know I kept waiting for flowers that didn't really happen. Last year when I grew red taters there were all kinds of flowers but it was loaded with potato beetles too, were the beetles drawn to the flowers? I wonder because this year in contrast with no flowers, there were no potato beetles. Hmm, inspected the plants every single day too. Though I did find a huge hornworm, a greenish mexican bean beetle I think, and a japanese beetle.

Yuck! Worms gross me out! So you are getting potatoes without having had any flowers on them? Hope thats happening for me too! I was thinking of just leaving the potato squares alone until the plants started to die off in hopes there would be something to harvest. You give me hope!! Evelyn from zone 4 Wyoming

Efirvin - Worms gross you out? Last year I jumped when I saw my first hornworm - as large as my pinky finger. Gave me chills to look at it. Now that I see how slow they move and how damaging they are, I get them to crawl off the branch onto a stick and I put them in the bird feeder and let nature take over. Re: potato flowers, I think you will be fine! I recall reading that some plants put out flowers and others don't. I wouldn't worry about flowering. Dying plants are your clue that things are going well ! The leaves on my Yukon Gold turned brown and yellow and the stems fell over. Soon it was time to harvest

Here are my son's volunteer potatos in late June. They came up in the MM and compost left from last year. One of those bins doesn't even have holes in it for drainage as I just dumped the soil from another bin into it. I told him today to start harvesting. I pulled one egg sized and one key lime sized blue potato after taking the picture. He sliced up and fried them. Said they were tasty.